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Very rigid class systems that allow for no upward mobility in life. Upward/downward mobility is extremely restricted

Class (stratified) Society

subsets born with higher economic opportunity, power, and social status

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Cultural Diffusion

Patterns are copied or borrowed from neighboring groups

Culture

Some things people do seem based on individual learning and response to rewards or punishments.

Other behaviors stem from sociallearning and are traits that are common to certain groups of people but not others.

Dominance Hierarchy

High status individuals convert their dominance into higher genetic contribution.

Thus all individuals should be designed by natural selection to desire high status and make efforts to achieve it.

Higher ranked groups often gang up to keep lower ranked groups from moving up the dominance hierarchy

Egalitarian Society

Everyone born with equal access to resources, power, status.

Most hunter-gather and small tribal agriculturalists are egalitarian.

Ranked

Some individuals have symbolically higher rank but often not much more power or economic status. Many pre-state chiefdoms are ranked societies.

Social Learning

Social learning in animals mainly leads to the spread of behaviors that could be learned individually. There is evidence that culture of animals includes socially learned information but less evidence of a cultural component due to enforced norms of behavior.

The socially learned information becomes part of the environment. But it is an environment created by enforced rules rather than being composed of physical and non-human biological elements

Unmotivated Imitation

Human children have a propensity to copy. Imitate adult behaviors when they have no idea what they are for, and when no rewards follow the behavior.

Affinal relations are weak until children are produced, and can become quickly strained.

Ambilineal Decent

Double and or ambilineal descent = also possible

(Central Brazilian Indians often inherit clan from mother, ceremony group from father– individuals in many tribes gain territory use rights through both mother’s and father’s side).

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Avunculocal Residence

Avunculocal(“Uncle” location)

-- 4% of societies

-- Americas, Micronesia and Africa

-- New couples move in with the husband’s mother’s brother after marriage.

--emphasizes the importance of the maternal kin line but taking into allowing on older male to be the household leader.

-- Societies where matrilineal descent determines property ownership, but men are political leaders.

Bilateral Decent

Bilateral kinship is a situation when both father’s and mother’s kin are equally (un-) important for most functions (modern USA).

Bilocal Residence

Bilocal

– common when one set of parents are likely to be dead, & when property rights are not strongly inherited through paternal or maternal lines.

When economic opportunities vary from family to family bilocal residence allows individuals to move to the best opportunity.

Endogamy or low levels of violence allow for bilocal residence.

Clan

Groups of lineages who are descended from some unspecified common ancestor far back in time.

Often clans are land holding groups defined in terms of a common ancestor.

Scottish clans were ambilineal descent groups that held a piece of territory called a glen.

The clan may be identified through association with mythical animal or plant ancestor called a TOTEM.

Consanguinal Kin

CONSANGUINAL(“blood” relations based on common descent). Consanguinal relations are usually stable for life.

Descent Group

-- Publicly recognized social entities

-- Membership from relation to a common ancestor or along a specific genealogical line.

Lineage

Lineages are the smallest unit of descent groups: a corporate descent group whose members trace their genealogical links to a known common ancestor. Groups of lineages who are descended from some unspecified common ancestor far back in time

Matrilineal Descent

Descent through the female line. Examples: Hopi, Navajo

Matrilocal Residence

– (15% of recent societies)

-- many in South America, North America, Africa.

-- Daughters stay with their parents, and co-reside with female kin (sisters, aunts, female parallel cousins). Men may move into a matrilocal house in the same village in which their kin reside. Men rarely move very far -- see their male kin regularly

Neological Residence

-- rare (about 5%)

-- mainly restricted to post-industrial economies.

New couples live somewhat distant from both spouses’ parents and are economically independent as soon as they marry.

Patrilineal Descent

descent through male line

Patrilocal Residence

(about 70% of recent societies).

Sons stay with their fathers and co-reside with male kin (brothers, uncles, male parallel cousins) and their spouses.

Women move residence at marriage and may sometimes live far away and never see their consaguineal kin again. -- Asia, India, the Middle East, Australia and much of traditional European society (before the industrial revolution). Chimpanzee social organization = male kinremain together;adolescent females leave the group.

Phratry

-- groups of clans,

-- real common ancestor for a phratry may not be identified. (sometimes a totem or mythic ancestor instead)

-- Phratries may be exogamous. Example:Hopi phratries.

Totem

The clan may be identified through association with mythical animal or plant ancestor called a TOTEM

Anthropomorphic Deity

These societies tend to have human-like (anthropomorphic)gods and goddesses.

Even gods and goddesses of natural phenomena have human qualities.

Examples:Greek gods Apollo & Poseidon

Monotheism

One God.

Polytheism

Many Gods.

Animism

Nature is animated by all kinds of spirits: plants and animal species, rocks, trees, mountains, springs, and other geographical features may be inhabited by specific spirits.

Animitism

Spirits are impersonal, not tied to specific kinds of plants animals or objects.Instead people and things can be animated by a kind of generalized spirit that is like luck, charm, spirit, charisma, grace.

Shaman

Part-time religious specialist

Priest

Religious specialist (sometimes only performs religious ceremonies)

E.B Tylor- Culture

First defined by EB Tylor in 1871 as: “that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.

This definition emphasized the fact that culture is learned and is inherent in the values, beliefs and techniques used by humans.

However, culture may not really exist as an “integrated whole”. (Some behaviors can change quickly & not affect others)

R. Boyd-Culture

For this class we develop a similar definition of culture that contains two components: (R. Boyd)

*Culture is information acquired by individuals through social learning that leads to regular behavioral patterns.

A property of culture is that it is cumulative.

It is possible to build more and more complex culture on top of a simpler foundation.

Haviland-Culture

Important distinction between:

1)Behavior (observed activities, material products or traces of behavior) and

2) Culture ( an “abstract” set of values beliefs & techniques that people use to interpret experience and generate behavior related to survival and reproduction.

Haviland’s definition of culture: “a set of rules that when acted upon by the members of a society, produces human behavior that falls within the range of variation that the members find successful.”

Marvin Harris-Culture/taboo

Argued that cultural traits are functional and adaptive.

1)Proposed that ban on pork in Middle Eastern countries was due to the fact that pigs need water in hot weather and would foul the water supply.

2)Harris suggests that a public goods problem is solved through social institutions. All would like pig for themselves but if everyone has one we may all get sick and die. Thus, all pigs should be banned for the public good.

Cultural v.s Genetic Transmission (differences)

However it is also unlike the genetic system in several ways:

1) Culture doesn’t pass only from parent to child, but “laterally” through a process of learning and imitation.

2) Cultural traits are acquired during the lifetime (the learning rules that produce culture are like Lamarckian inheritance).

Cultural Behaviors In Chimps

Chimps:

a) 39 different behavioral patterns including tool use, grooming and courtship patterns are customary or habitual in some communities but are absent in others.

b) the combined repertoire of these behavioral patterns in each chimp community is highly distinctive. These are “cultural groups”.

Cultural Behaviors In Animals

This kind of “culture” is common among other animals but cumulative cultural change is rare.

Social learning in animals mainly leads to the spread of behaviors that could be learned individually.

There is evidence that culture of animals includes socially learned information but less evidence of a cultural component due to enforced norms of behavior.

Copying Behavior in Humans

Human culture is promoted by an evolved propensity to copy.

a) social facilitation– the activity of older animals makes it more likely that younger animals will learn the behavior. If adults use tools to crack nuts, juveniles will be exposed to nuts and rocks and will figure it out through trial and error.

If capital required for economic success is widely available (knowledge and creativity) a large class of individuals are potentially upwardly mobile (middle class).

Wealth and Social Status

Wealth differentials almost always lead to power and status differentials (after time), but power and status may show long historical lag even when wealth disappears

Ethnicity

The amplification of in-group markers.

Individuals often prefer to interact with those who have predictable and same behavioral tendencies

The preferences for interaction with individuals who share some common world view and rules leads to signaling of in-group membership.– divergence in some traits between neighbors is likely to be amplified as a better signal

When ethnic marking has a payoff, markers may be more exaggerated on the boundaries between groups.

Moiety

--Society is divided up into two descent groups( ‘moieties’)

-- Many Australian tribes are divided into exogamous moieties

Hawaiian Kinship System

Hawaiian -- only kinship system in which all first cousins are unmarriageable since they all take the same kin term as siblings.

Hawaiian system implies that all close relatives in both own and parental generations are just like nuclear family members

all of the siblings of parents, are called mothers and fathers, all of the children are called brothers and sisters.

Sudanese Kinship System

The Sudanese system suggest that all first cousins are marriageable since they all take terms different from sibling

Sudanese system imply that no relatives outside the nuclear family take the same role as family members.

every kin member gets a different kinship term , specific

Men and Politics

Males have more to gain (in genetic contribution) from high political status than do women.

Females generally don’t participate in warfare

Major Functions of Religion

1) Explains the unexplainable

2) Relieves anxiety about the future

3) Promotes cooperation

4) Relieves anxiety from uncertainty about what to do

5) Justifies behavior

6) Passes on behavioral advice (that might be questioned)

7) Social control

Religion and Social Complexity

Hunter-Gatherers:

- Egalitarian

- SHAMAN = part-time religious specialist

More complex societies (especially States)

- Stratified / Class society

- PRIEST = religious specialist

(sometimes only performs religious ceremonies)

Descent Group Functions

1.Regulating marriage gives priority rights to certain men and eliminates others– within descent group marriage prohibited